Cairngorms Nation­al Park Authority

Intern­al Audit Report ²⁰²²⁄₂₃

Work­force Man­age­ment and Planning

July 2022

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Audit Spon­sor	Key Con­tacts	Audit team
Dav­id Camer­on, Deputy Chief Exec­ut­ive and Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Services	Kate Christie, Head of Organ­isa­tion­al Development	Eliza­beth Young, Engage­ment Lead
		Stephanie Hume, Seni­or Manager
		Lor­na Mun­ro, Intern­al Auditor

Exec­ut­ive Summary	1
Man­age­ment Action Plan	5
Appendix A – Definitions	11

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Exec­ut­ive Summary

Con­clu­sion

The import­ance of an effect­ive recruit­ment and reten­tion approach can­not be under­played with­in the cur­rent eco­nom­ic con­di­tions and chal­len­ging recruit­ment mar­ket that most organ­isa­tions find them­selves facing. This is in addi­tion to the spe­cif­ic chal­lenges that the Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity (CNPA) faces due to its rur­al loc­a­tion, the increase in staff num­bers asso­ci­ated with major extern­ally fun­ded projects/​programmes and new ways of work­ing in a post pan­dem­ic world. CNPA also con­tin­ues to work with­in the scope of the Scot­tish Government’s no com­puls­ory redund­ancy policy.

CNPA’s work­force plan­ning arrange­ments, whilst gen­er­ally well designed and work­ing effect­ively, are not informed by an up to date and com­pre­hens­ive Work­force Strategy. The cur­rent strategy, developed pre-pan­dem­ic in 2018, does not include suc­ces­sion plans for a range of crit­ic­al activities/​services nor demo­graph­ic and oth­er intel­li­gence that could be used to identi­fy the work­force risks and sup­port effect­ive decision mak­ing. In addi­tion the longer-term flex­ible work­ing arrange­ments are not yet clear, with a tri­al ongo­ing until June 2023. We note the Work­force Strategy is reviewed and developed in line with the Cor­por­ate Strategy, how­ever the organ­isa­tion is cur­rently between strategies, though the like­li­hood of risk to CNPA in the inter­ven­ing peri­od is mit­ig­ated by a trans­ition­al deliv­ery and staff­ing plan for the 2022/2023 period.

We found that the Work­force Strategy links to an Estab­lish­ment Plan and that the Recruit­ment Policy addresses the over­arch­ing prin­ciples, extern­al and intern­al pres­sures, decision mak­ing, posts, a fully cos­ted and afford­able staff­ing com­ple­ment with­in CNPA’s budget. We also noted that well­being is being addressed through com­mu­nic­a­tions, sur­veys and a flex­ible work­ing trial.

Back­ground and scope

Work­force plan­ning is the pro­cess that organ­iz­a­tions use to ensure that they have the right people with the right skills in the right place at the right time. This can be chal­len­ging; the size and struc­ture of the work­force should be shaped by an organisation’s cur­rent and future stra­tegic object­ives, the needs of its ser­vice users and of poten­tial users over the plan­ning peri­od, the amount, and sources of fund­ing avail­able and the wider policy and legis­lat­ive envir­on­ment in which it operates.

Pub­lic sec­tor fin­ances will remain under pres­sure for the fore­see­able future mean­ing that pub­lic organ­isa­tions may need to con­sider fur­ther work­force changes, whilst bal­an­cing the pub­lic sec­tor restric­tions such as no redund­an­cies. There­fore, effect­ive scru­tiny of work­force plan­ning, and man­age­ment arrange­ments is essential.

In accord­ance with the ²⁰²²⁄₂₃ Intern­al Audit Plan, we reviewed the arrange­ments in place for plan­ning future work­force needs to deliv­er strategies and cor­por­ate plans. We also con­sidered the recruit­ment and reten­tion arrange­ments in place for staff and ongo­ing staff well­being ini­ti­at­ives, par­tic­u­larly in the con­text of cov­id-19 impact.

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Con­trol assessment

4 — Yellow	1 — Amber	3 — Green	2 — Yellow

1. There is a work­force plan in place that artic­u­lates the cur­rent and future staff­ing needs of the organ­isa­tion and con­siders the likely impacts of work­force demo­graph­ics and past pat­terns of change.
2. The recruit­ment and reten­tion approach includes con­sid­er­a­tion of key roles, intern­al and extern­al recruit­ment factors and avail­able resourcing options.
3. Man­age­ment inform­a­tion is suf­fi­ciently com­pre­hens­ive and robust to enable report­ing on recruit­ment and resourcing issues, with agreed actions doc­u­mented and fol­lowed up timeously.
4. CNPA have arrange­ments in place to com­mu­nic­ate with staff and ensure their well­being that con­sider the impact of remote, lone and hybrid work­ing arrangements.

Improve­ment actions by type and priority

(Chart show­ing Con­trol Design and Con­trol Oper­a­tion with Grade 1,2,3 and 4)

Two improve­ment actions have been iden­ti­fied from this review both of which relate to the design of con­trols. See Appendix A for defin­i­tions of col­our coding.

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Key find­ings

Good prac­tice

• There is a defined cor­por­ate plan­ning pro­cess in place to ensure that CNPA’s Work­force Strategy is reviewed and approved by seni­or man­age­ment and the Board, on devel­op­ment of a new stra­tegic plan.
• The work­force estab­lish­ment is strongly linked to the CNPA’s fin­an­cial plans and budget mon­it­or­ing pro­cess, with the cur­rent plan fully cos­ted and afford­able with­in CNPA’s budget.
• Fin­ance pre­pare detailed fin­an­cial fore­casts, includ­ing work­force costs, that we have con­firmed are mon­itored reg­u­larly by the Seni­or Man­age­ment Team.
• Busi­ness cases are developed for all posts being recruited to, with these required to con­sider altern­at­ive recruit­ment options, e.g. second­ments, interns, restrict­ing ser­vices etc, in order to help mit­ig­ate the risks asso­ci­ated with the loss of key skills and the aware­ness of the extern­al recruit­ment chal­lenges faced by the organ­isa­tion. All cases are approved by the Senior/​Operational Man­age­ment Team.
• The recruit­ment pro­cess is well doc­u­mented, includ­ing the need to con­sider altern­at­ive recruit­ment pro­cesses to fill posts, and our test­ing con­firmed that the expec­ted con­trols, in terms of advert­ising, decision mak­ing, and appoint­ment are oper­at­ing effectively.
• The Resources Com­mit­tee routinely chal­lenge and scru­tin­ise reports on work­force man­age­ment and costs.
• Well-being forms an integ­ral part of the per­form­ance man­age­ment pro­cess and ongo­ing man­age­ment activ­it­ies post-COV­ID, with staff feed­back being sought on the effect­ive­ness of processes.

Areas for improvement

We have iden­ti­fied a small num­ber of areas for improve­ment which, if addressed, would strengthen CNPA’s con­trol frame­work. These include:

• Updat­ing the Work­force Strategy to reflect the post-pan­dem­ic work­ing envir­on­ment and CNPA’s new Cor­por­ate Plan.
• Provid­ing addi­tion­al inform­a­tion with­in the Work­force Strategy and Estab­lish­ment Plan on activities/​services delivered by the vari­ous teams and put in place appro­pri­ate suc­ces­sion plans for the iden­ti­fied activities/​services and where appro­pri­ate key posts.
• Devel­op­ing the range of intel­li­gence used to sup­port the work­force plan­ning pro­cess to ensure more effect­ive decision making.

These are fur­ther dis­cussed in the Man­age­ment Action Plan below.

Impact on risk register

The CNPA cor­por­ate risk register (dated Janu­ary 2022) included the fol­low­ing risks rel­ev­ant to this review:

• A12.2: Resourcing: future com­munity led loc­al devel­op­ment fund­ing cur­rently delivered through LEAD­ER, togeth­er with wider fund­ing pre­vi­ously from EU struc­tur­al and agri­cul­tur­al sources is lost and cre­ates a sig­ni­fic­ant gap in our capa­city to deliv­er against our devel­op­ment priorities
• A9.3: Staff­ing: addi­tion­al extern­ally fun­ded pro­jects strains staff work­load capa­city with increased risks of stress and reduced morale.
• A28: Staff­ing: deliv­ery of key out­comes is impacted by staff turnover, par­tic­u­larly in pro­ject teams.

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Man­age­ment have a trans­ition­al deliv­ery plan for ²²⁄₂₃, and a fully cos­ted staff­ing plan for ²²⁄₂₃ which includes iden­ti­fied and SMT approved staff recruit­ment plans. How­ever, with CNPA in trans­ition between cor­por­ate strategies, the out of date and incom­plete (e.g. embed­ding well­being) Work­force Strategy there may be some increase to the risk of deliv­ery of object­ives. Man­age­ment should there­fore con­sider and fully doc­u­ment the key risks to CNPA as a res­ult of the absence of an up to date and com­pre­hens­ive Work­force Strategy, tak­ing account of the issues high­lighted in this report and escal­at­ing with­in the risk frame­work as appropriate.

Acknow­ledge­ments

We would like to thank all staff con­sul­ted dur­ing this review for their assist­ance and co-operation.

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Man­age­ment Action Plan

Con­trol Object­ive 1: There is a work­force plan in place that artic­u­lates the cur­rent and future staff­ing needs of the organ­isa­tion and con­siders the likely impacts of work­force demo­graph­ics and past pat­terns of change.

1.1 Work­force Strategy

CNPA review their Work­force Strategy in line with the devel­op­ment and review of the Stra­tegic Plan. The cur­rent Stra­tegic Plan has ended, and the new plan is being developed over the course of 2022. In the inter­ven­ing peri­od, we note that due to the impact of the pan­dem­ic there have been many changes to work­ing arrange­ments that CNPA has had to adopt, mean­ing the cur­rent Work­force Strategy (dated 2018) is not wholly reflect­ive of the cur­rent land­scape in which CNPA is operating.

While we note that many of the chal­lenges out­lined in the 2018 Work­force Strategy, such as rur­al­ity, remain, addi­tion­al chal­lenges such as COV­ID-19 and increased part­ner­ship fund­ing have not yet been incor­por­ated with­in the strategy. We have con­firmed the work­force risks asso­ci­ated with these addi­tion­al chal­lenges have been par­tially recognised/​mitigated by ad hoc papers to the Board and Resources Com­mit­tee, includ­ing those on turnover and recruit­ment dif­fi­culties, along with papers to the Per­form­ance and Resources Com­mit­tee on staff­ing of major pro­jects and pro­grammes as they are developed.

Our review of these doc­u­ments iden­ti­fied that while they provide a good found­a­tion for work­force plan­ning, there is lim­ited inform­a­tion on the work­force skills required over the short, medi­um and long term. This is par­tic­u­larly rel­ev­ant for those posts where spe­cif­ic know­ledge or on the job exper­i­ence is required and was an action spe­cific­ally required by the 2018 Work­force Strategy. This inform­a­tion is essen­tial to main­tain effect­ive suc­ces­sion plan­ning and man­age the asso­ci­ated risks.

Risk

There is a risk that man­age­ment inform­a­tion is not suf­fi­ciently com­pre­hens­ive and robust, res­ult­ing in inap­pro­pri­ate decisions and con­sequently a fail­ure to achieve objectives.

Recom­mend­a­tion

We recom­mend the new Work­force Strategy is updated to reflect the new oper­at­ing envir­on­ment now faced by the organ­isa­tion, the work­force risks any changes pose and the actions required to mit­ig­ate these. Fur­ther, we recom­mend the Work­force Strategy is updated to include a state­ment on the pro­cess for suc­ces­sion plan­ning. This should be sup­por­ted by a detailed ana­lys­is of teams and their con­tri­bu­tion to CNPA object­ives and ser­vices, along with appro­pri­ate con­tin­gency plans. that would require plans to be in place.

Amber

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Man­age­ment Action

Grade 3 (Design)

We accept the recom­mend­a­tion. Going for­ward, we will update the Work­force strategy to include the pro­cess for suc­ces­sion plan­ning. Suc­ces­sion plan­ning is a chal­lenge for a small organ­isa­tion with some roles being ​“lone” roles but which require a unique skill set that can­not be eas­ily developed by oth­er officers, nev­er­the­less we recog­nise we could ana­lyse team data and coordin­ate teams devel­op­ing appro­pri­ate con­tin­gency plans.

Action own­er: Head of Organ­isa­tion­al Devel­op­ment Due date: Q4 ²⁰²²⁄₂₃

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1.2 Work­force intelligence

As the impact of the pan­dem­ic and Brexit on the labour mar­ket become clear­er, most organ­isa­tions are see­ing changes with­in their work­force and face a chal­len­ging recruit­ment mar­ket to fill any vacan­cies that arise. With an increas­ing num­ber of posts to fill, it is import­ant for CNPA to make use of demo­graph­ic and internal/​external intel­li­gence to sup­port more effect­ive work­force plan­ning and min­im­ise the like­li­hood and impact of resourcing shortfalls.

We iden­ti­fied that the Work­force Strategy and Estab­lish­ment Plan mod­el­ler includes lim­ited inform­a­tion on staff aspir­a­tions (such as retire­ment, career pro­gres­sion and devel­op­ment) and asso­ci­ated demo­graph­ic ana­lys­is. While this inform­a­tion is being iden­ti­fied on an ad hoc basis through per­form­ance dis­cus­sions, gen­er­al oper­a­tion­al man­age­ment meet­ings and recruit­ment busi­ness cases, the inform­a­tion is not form­ally doc­u­mented in such a way that could be best used to sup­port work­force planning.

Risk

There is a risk that man­age­ment inform­a­tion is not suf­fi­ciently com­pre­hens­ive and robust, res­ult­ing in inap­pro­pri­ate decisions and con­sequently a fail­ure to achieve objectives.

Recom­mend­a­tion

The work­force strategy should be updated to include a state­ment on wider demo­graph­ic and intern­al intel­li­gence. CNPA should con­sider both its own work­force demo­graph­ics and issues, as well as nation­al trends, to gen­er­ate a roun­ded set of assump­tions that can then inform work­force plan­ning. This should include for example, assump­tions on par­ent­al leave, sick­ness absence rates, staff turnover, part-time work­ing and retire­ment ages that are applied to the demo­graph­ics of CNPA’s work­force to pre­dict future pat­terns of staff changes.

Man­age­ment Action

Grade 2 (Design)

We accept this recom­mend­a­tion. We pro­pose in addi­tion gath­er­ing data around staff and leav­er length of ser­vice and age which may inform future fore­casts and asso­ci­ated recruit­ment plans. We will aim to use this togeth­er with HR report­ing data to devel­op a set of assump­tions to inform work­force planning.

Action own­er: Head of Organ­isa­tion­al Devel­op­ment Due date: Q4 ²⁰²²⁄₂₃

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Con­trol Object­ive 2: The recruit­ment and reten­tion approach includes con­sid­er­a­tion of key roles, intern­al and extern­al recruit­ment factors and avail­able resourcing options.

2.1 Decision making

We con­firmed the Work­force Strategy is sup­por­ted by a well-defined recruit­ment policy and pro­cess (as con­firmed by our test­ing) that con­siders all avail­able resourcing options and seeks approv­al from senior/​operational man­age­ment team for the course of action recom­mend­a­tion. The busi­ness case pro­cess seeks con­firm­a­tion that all pos­sible intern­al and extern­al recruit­ment options have been con­sidered, includ­ing restruc­tur­ing, replace­ment, redeploy­ment, second­ments etc and a pro­pos­al of the most appro­pri­ate option. This helps to man­age the impact of the Scot­tish Government’s no com­puls­ory redund­an­cies policy. How­ever, as indic­ated in MAP 1.1 key activities/​services (teams) are not iden­ti­fied in advance but as part of each post assessment.

Should the recruit­ment con­text in which CNPA is oper­at­ing change in the medi­um to longer term, then there is the oppor­tun­ity to stream­line the decision-mak­ing pro­cess by only seek­ing approv­al from seni­or man­agers for excep­tions to the work­force estab­lish­ment plan and the asso­ci­ated suc­ces­sion plans as per MAP 1.1.

We have assessed this con­trol object­ive as yel­low to high­light the link to the risk as iden­ti­fied in MAP 1.1.

Yel­low

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Con­trol Object­ive 3: Man­age­ment inform­a­tion is suf­fi­ciently com­pre­hens­ive and robust to enable report­ing on recruit­ment and resourcing issues, with agreed actions doc­u­mented and fol­lowed up timeously.

No weak­nesses identified

The Work­force Strategy is updated in line with the changes to the cor­por­ate strategy, with the sup­port­ing Estab­lish­ment Plan and budget man­age­ment report­ing pro­cesses ensur­ing that issues are high­lighted as part of the reg­u­lar report­ing to the quarterly Resources Com­mit­tee. In addi­tion, ad hoc reports are presen­ted to the Com­mit­tee on HR issues such as staff turnover and recruitment.

Fur­ther, we con­firmed that all post changes/​amendments and recruit­ment activ­ity are con­sidered by the joint seni­or and oper­a­tion­al man­age­ment teams.

The Deputy Chief Exec­ut­ive also sup­ports seni­or man­agers by provid­ing inform­a­tion on the fin­an­cial impact of any pro­posed work­force scen­ario as part of ongo­ing fin­an­cial mon­it­or­ing and decision-mak­ing activities.

Green

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Con­trol Object­ive 4: CNPA have arrange­ments in place to com­mu­nic­ate with staff and ensure their well­being that con­sider the impact of remote, lone and hybrid work­ing arrangements.

No report­able weak­nesses identified

At the time of the audit a form­al home work­ing com­mu­nic­a­tions plan is not cur­rently in place (this was an agreed intern­al audit action as recom­men­ded in the COV­ID Recov­ery Audit of ²⁰²⁰⁄₂₁).

In prac­tice how­ever, we con­firmed com­mu­nic­a­tions on well­being have been included with­in the estab­lished com­mu­nic­a­tions activ­ity of weekly sum­mary emails, Well­being Wed­nes­day emails and the Per­form­ance Man­age­ment Policy. Fur­ther, CNPA has under­taken peri­od­ic staff sur­veys to ensure that guid­ance and policy is being applied in prac­tice, with good engage­ment by staff and the most recent sur­vey indic­at­ing that the major­ity of staff read the com­mu­nic­a­tions issued. We also have iden­ti­fied action being taken as a res­ult of the sur­veys, for example feed­back has res­ul­ted in a mid-week cof­fee social and man­age­ment noted the pop­ular­ity with many staff enjoy­ing the oppor­tun­ity to meet up with oth­ers inform­ally at this time.

CNPA has not yet defined the organisation’s expect­a­tions around longer-term hybrid work­ing arrange­ments, includ­ing the addi­tion­al con­trols that will be required to man­age the risks that a per­man­ent change to work­ing arrange­ments rep­res­ents in terms of man­aging employ­ee well­being, main­tain­ing a strong organ­isa­tion­al cul­ture and effect­ive two-way com­mu­nic­a­tion between staff and management.

The organ­isa­tion is though cur­rently tri­al­ling a hybrid work­ing approach, due to com­plete in mid-2023, to determ­ine the longer-term flex­ible work­ing policy (staff sur­veys indic­ate a strong pref­er­ence for flex­ible work­ing e.g. in the June 2021 sur­vey 84% of staff indic­ated they prefer hybrid work­ing). The tri­al policy out­lines spe­cif­ic areas for con­sid­er­a­tion through­out the tri­al such as well­being, prac­tic­al­it­ies (e.g. DSE assess­ments and work­ing hours), expect­a­tions and prin­ciples and with staff and their man­agers will sign up to these if they are approved for tri­al participation.

A review of the effect­ive­ness of the arrange­ments by the employ­ee and line man­ager will take place at six and 12 months, after which time if work­ing effect­ively then a per­man­ent con­trac­tu­al change can be made. Form­al feed­back will be fed through HR and the ongo­ing staff sur­veys to inform the organ­isa­tions approach mov­ing forward.

We have assessed this con­trol object­ive as yel­low to reflect the ongo­ing work to identi­fy, form­ally agree, and doc­u­ment the hybrid work­ing approach and the com­ple­tion of the out­stand­ing intern­al audit action from ²⁰²⁰⁄₂₁.

Yel­low

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Appendix A – Definitions

Con­trol assessments

• R: Fun­da­ment­al absence or fail­ure of key controls.
• A: Con­trol object­ive not achieved — con­trols are inad­equate or ineffective.
• Y: Con­trol object­ive achieved — no major weak­nesses but scope for improvement.
• G: Con­trol object­ive achieved — con­trols are adequate, effect­ive and efficient.

Man­age­ment action grades

• 4: Very high risk expos­ure — major con­cerns requir­ing imme­di­ate seni­or atten­tion that cre­ate fun­da­ment­al risks with­in the organisation.
• 3: High risk expos­ure — absence / fail­ure of key con­trols that cre­ate sig­ni­fic­ant risks with­in the organisation.
• 2: Mod­er­ate risk expos­ure — con­trols are not work­ing effect­ively and effi­ciently and may cre­ate mod­er­ate risks with­in the organisation.
• 1: Lim­ited risk expos­ure — con­trols are work­ing effect­ively, but could be strengthened to pre­vent the cre­ation of minor risks or address gen­er­al house-keep­ing issues.

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